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Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday kicked off a series of West Coast appearances with a keynote speech at a San Francisco conference for marketing professionals. Kimberly Tere reports. (Published Tuesday, April 8, 2014)

Will she or won’t she run? Hillary Clinton appears to be inching closer to an answer.

After months of speculation and sidestepping, Clinton tackled the big question with a maybe, telling tech innovators she is "thinking” about a 2016 run.

“I am thinking about it, but I am going to continue thinking about it for a while,” Clinton said Tuesday at a conference for marketing professionals in San Francisco.

Looking very much like a presidential candidate, former U.S. Secretary of State Clinton kicked off a series of West Coast appearances with a keynote speech addressed to several thousand people at a customer conference hosted by Marketo, a Silicon Valley maker of marketing software.

Clinton told Fernandez she’ll have to weigh some difficult questions before she decides whether to run for president in 2016.

“I’m not going to make a decision for a while because I’m actually enjoying my life,” Clinton said. “I’m actually having fun doing ordinary things like seeing my friends and going on long walks, playing with dogs.”

Clinton’s keynote speech included comments on clean energy, the immigration debate, and education and unemployment.

“I see the small and the large changes we can make right now that will put us on the path to the kind of success that I know awaits us if, individually and together, we make the right decisions,” Clinton said.

Clinton travels to Portland Tuesday night to speak to the World Affairs Council of Oregon. Then she’ll make a stop in Las Vegas and then it’s back to the Bay Area.

Clinton, who ran for president in 2008, is widely expected to run again in 2016.

Political analysts say Clinton has been doing a great job keeping herself relevant and in the public eye since she left her post as secretary of state 14 months ago.

“Barack Obama showed that it was very effective to try and bring new voters into the system and to really target young voters, so I think that Hillary Clinton is following that same playbook,” said Melinda Jackson, associate professor of political science at San Jose State University, where Clinton will speak Thursday night.

Clinton is scheduled to appear on the SJSU campus as part of a lecture series featuring prominent women. As of Tuesday evening, StubHub had 67 tickets left to see Clinton at the 5,000-seat SJSU Events Center.

Clinton stepped down as secretary of state at the end of President Barack Obama's first term. Before that, she served as a U.S. Senator from New York from 2001-2009.